In the twentieth century, communism was very popular with a group of academic Muslims. For these Muslims, communism represented the peak of justice. It represented the peak of worldly civilization, as the USSR at that time was ascendant. So these Muslim academics wrote fervently about how Muslims needed to adopt communism and how true Islam was communist at its heart. They interpreted the Quran and hadith in that light, pointing to verses about zakat and sadaqa as divine directives against private property.

Of course, there were many parts of Islamic law that take certain property relations for granted, but since these conflicted with communism, the Muslim communists attacked the fiqh, called it backwards, unjust, and nothing but a capitalistic distortion of God’s true religion. According to them, the classical ulama were obviously just serving their own interests as property owners, so they created fiqh to advance their bourgeois agenda and oppress the working class.

Other Muslims of the day pushed back against this, poked holes in their arguments, and defended the ulama from their smears. Having been rebuffed intellectually and communally, these Muslims became more extreme little by little until they decided to leave Islam entirely. Didn’t Marx say that religion was the opiate of the people? Didn’t these traditional Muslims reject the clear justice of communism and the insights of historical materialism? It must be Islam itself that is the problem.

So they became apostates and denounced Islam along with the Muslim sheep who followed it blindly. Despite it all, they had high hopes that in the near future the light of communism would overcome the darkness of the Islamic tradition and the entire Muslim world would follow them into enlightenment.

Soon thereafter communism went out of vogue. The USSR fell. By the end of the twentieth century, no one remembered anything these people had written or advocated for. Their movement was flushed down the toilet of history.

Today’s social justice, liberal Muslims — openly, militantly calling people to fahisha and disobedience, brazenly slandering the ulama and sowing the seeds of confusion in Muslims’ hearts — are on the exact same path. May Allah expedite their fate!